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SHAFR Opinion

The McChrystal Affair: Pity the Poor Historian

by Michael Hunt

Crossposted from Michael Hunt’s Washington and the World blog.
There is good reason to pity the poor historian, who has been tested especially severely during the recent McChrystal-Obama imbroglio as the eruption of historical parallels and lessons have ranged from the wrong-headed to the off-kilter.
Henry Kissinger is a good example of the wrong-headed. This policy heavyweight, [...]

LGBT Equality and The Limits of Human Rights

by Laura Belmonte

Last October, a bill was introduced in the Ugandan parliament that would make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment or even death.  The bill also calls for the extradition of Ugandans who engage in homosexual sex in other countries and for criminal penalties for individuals, media, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, and [...]

Thinking about Remembering

by Molly Wood

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and even though I have not lived there for many years, I still visit regularly. I often think that my decision to become a historian stems in part from the stories of my family history told to me by grandparents and other relatives. I learned from my grandmother, for [...]

Germany to Greece: Drop Dead

by William Glenn Gray

Germans have chosen to work; Greeks have chosen leisure. For this reason, Germans are furious with Greece for accumulating an unsustainable debt burden and thereby undermining the solidity of the European currency. But the self-righteous anger in Berlin may itself call into question the political basis of the Euro.

Diplomats Among Warriors

by John Prados

In Afghanistan at the moment (February 2010), U.S. Marines, allied troops, and Afghan government soldiers are embarked on an offensive at a town called Marja in Helmand province. American commander-in-chief General Stanley A. McChrystal here makes the first expression of the strategy that underlies the appeal for reinforcements that led to the Obama administration “surge” [...]

Is Wartime a Time to End Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

by Mary Dudziak

As the Obama Administration moves (slowly) toward repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, one argument in opposition is that the nation is at war, and significant changes in the military should not take place during wartime. One response to that point is that all hands are needed during heightened military deployments, and it harms American [...]

Beware Presidents’ Use of History

by John Prados

We are told that history plays as tragedy and repeats as farce. But perhaps that is changing. In the summer of 2007 President George W. Bush invoked the Vietnam analogy to justify an equally or more tragic war in Iraq. And in the West Point speech announcing his new strategy for Afghanistan, President Barack Obama [...]

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Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

Weekly Digest – 4/19/10

by Nick Ducote
Monday, April 19th, 2010

Israel has delivered a secret warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad that it will respond to missile attacks from Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese-based Islamist group, by launching immediate retaliation against Syria itself. [more]
Last week, U.S. and Brazilian officials signed a defense pact that will significantly enhance bilateral military ties. While the agreement does notexplicitly discuss [...]

Obama and U.S. Foreign Policy

by KC Johnson
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Historians, of all people, should understand the dangers of prematurely evaluating a President’s foreign policy record. Quite apart from all that we learn as archives open, the passage of time provides perspective. To take an obvious example: while few contemporary observers would celebrate it now, at the time, Ronald Reagan’s approach to Afghanistan was heralded [...]

A View from the Outside: Assessing Obama’s First Year as President

by Sandra Scanlon
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Barack Obama’s run for the presidency was observed by European publics perhaps more than any US election in recent history. Students, for whom the presidency of Bill Clinton was barely a memory and little more than a footnote introducing the Bush era, debated the relative merits of a Clinton or Obama nomination largely in terms [...]